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3.30.2012

#1 - the hunger games. i know this was so yesterday, but i have a thing or two to say about it. i thought they did a phenomemal job. there were a couple things that were different than i pictured {like the entire capitol scene. not at all what i envisioned} and they left out the whole avox girl thing {i thought that was an important part later on?} but when all was said and done, i was so impressed with it. i thought jennifer lawrence played katniss perfectly. she was exactly what i imagined her to be. i've read about people complaining that she is too 'big' to play the part of katniss as well as being too 'big' to be paired up with josh hutcherson. i am appalled. first off, i actually found it quite nice to watch a movie where the girl is a normal size. this proves how much media has twisted the ideal image of a woman. it's sad. second, i don't think she was too big for josh, i think josh was too small for her. when reading the books, i imagined peeta as a strong, stalky boy and while josh did grow on me by the end of the movie, he still wasn't what i pictured peeta to be {probably because i could only see him as will ferrell's 10 year old son in 'kicking and screaming'. definitely not peeta material}. and as for liam hemsworth and his performance of gale...he could use a few more acting classes, but not too shabby. i loved this movie so much and i'm already counting down the days for 'catching fire' to come out {602 to be exact}.

#2 - this crazy cow that we found at the avila barn last weekend. i think we stood there for five minutes watching it and laughing. silly cow.

#3 - salted caramel ice cream.

doesn't that look divine? trust me, it is. this whole salted caramel fad has been kind of hit or miss for me. sometimes it's great and other times i feel like a cow licking a salt rock. this ice cream has the perfect blend of sweet and salty though. absolutely love it!

#4 - the fact that i've gotten to sleep in with zachary for two days in a row! usually he is leaving the house by six or seven to make it to base on time, but today and yesterday, he didn't have to be there until eleven. it's so nice waking up to his cute face.

#5 - this swim suit cover up.

i saw kim and conda from 'the biggest loser' wearing it in hawaii and i knew i had to have it. then i saw they made it in a maxi too...now i'm torn. any suggestions?

3.26.2012

zachary and i went on an adventure this weekend. on saturday we sent our family on their way and i found that i was a lot sadder than i was expecting to be. {of course, i knew i'd be sad. but not this sad} it hit me hard how little we get to see them and how bad i wish we lived closer. this gave reason for needing a little pick me up. so we jumped in the car and made our way to the little town of avila beach. it was just what the doctor ordered.

i've come to the conclusion that i am a sugar-aholic. no, seriously. when most people buy a bag of sour patch kids to eat over the next couple of days, i'm buying them to eat in the next hour. i guess that shows i have zero self-control as well, but that's beside the point. i am addicted to candy and all things sweet. so when we walked in to this store, i thought i'd died and gone to heaven. barrel upon barrel of taffy, jelly beans, and chocolate. what a perfect start to our day.

{i thought it was just so cute to have jelly bellies individually wrapped that i had to take a picture.}

even though the wind was picking up and we could see the clouds rolling in, we made sure to take a walk on the pier. i've never held on to my flip flops so hard in my life. the cracks between the boards were huge. i'm surprised i didn't fall in myself.

the view was gorgeous.

and we even spotted this little guy doing barrel rolls in the waves.﻿

we stopped at the avila barn, which reminded me a lot of the red barn in santaquin, utah - produce, jam, kettle corn, etc. but what the red barn doesn't have is red-eyed, demon-looking emus.

{creepy}

﻿anyway, we had a very good time. i sure love our little santa maria and all there is to do here. and when we move to cheyenne, i know it's going to be wonderful living so close to our families. life is kind of great right now. and my favorite part? being married to this guy:

3.23.2012

#1 - being with family. this has by far been my favorite part about this week. i hate that i've had to work every day, but gosh is it sure fun coming home to a full house. i'm so sad they are all leaving tomorrow! we just don't get to see them enough.

#2 - another trip to disneyland! that place makes me so happy. even though it rained the entire day. i'm slightly glad that it did though, otherwise i would have had no reason to buy this baby:

and yes, us girls got matching ones. because we are that awesome.

my feet were completely pruned from being wet all day long {huge pet peeve}, but i couldn't help loving every second of being there. lines were super short too, so that made it easier to enjoy things.

#3 - the griffith observatory. i honestly had no idea that this thing even existed. arika wanted to take pictures of the hollywood sign and google maps told me this was the best place to do it. so we drove up the mountain, saw a coyote on the way, battled people for parking, and finally reached our destination. it gave us a super pretty view:

and thanks to arika, i learned that this place is actually the scene for one of my favorite movies. look familiar?

﻿#4 - shamrock shakes. i read an article the other day that these things are to die for, so i made sure we tried one on our way home. i was not disappointed.

if you like mint ice cream at all, you will love one of these. definitely worth the couple bucks.

#5 - beach day and a campfire. zachary rented wetsuits and boogie boards for he and his brother, alex, and took a swim in the ocean last night.

they couldn't feel their feet or control their hands by the time they were done, but i think they had a good time. not to mention, they were basically swimming with real live sea otters. who does that?? it was awesome. we then made ourselves a cute little fire and had fun eating hot dogs and s'mores, while telling ghost stories.

3.16.2012

#1 - beach camping! our cute friends, devin and whitney invited us to go camping last weekend and goodness was it fun. we stayed up way later than we should have and ate way more junk food than was necessary, but that's what makes camping fun right?

i'm so glad these two will be living close to us when we move to cheyenne. i see a lot of dinner dates and shopping trips in our future.

we woke up and this was our view. it. was. awesome.

#2 - the barbie and ken wedding photoshoot. i saw this on pinterest and had to check it out. maybe i'm just weird, but i was dying laughing at some of the pictures. they are so spot on! need more motivation to look at it yourself? here's a sneak peek:

so funny to me.

#3 - celebrating pi{e} day. i know i did a whole post on this already, but it was one of my favorite things from the week. so i'm sharing it again. also, i feel kind of proud that i made a pumpkin pie. i know they're not that hard, but i've never done it before, so it was kind of an exciting moment in the averett household. they actually didn't turn out half bad!

﻿so little and cute. i love it.

#4 - these shoes:

i'm a flats and flip flops kind of girl, through and through. the only time i wear lace up shoes is to go running {which turns out, that's not very often}. but after all the trips we've made and theme parks we've been to, i'm sick of wanting to chop my feet of when we're done because they're too tire from trying to hold my flip flops on or my heels are rubbed raw. it's time to invest in a pair of shoes that will make it possible to enjoy my days. and these are the ones i want. that's all.

#5 - and finally, what i love most about this week is the fact that right at this very moment, our family is on their way to come spend an entire week with us. i'm so excited i can hardly stand it! this is going to be the longest day ever. we're meeting them in LA tonight and i cannot wait!

3.09.2012

#1 - i know i already talked about it, but disneyland was definitely my favorite thing that happend this week.

there's nothing better than a visit to the happiest place on earth.

#2 - this song:

i'm addicted to it. it was on the radio to and from work yesterday and it made my day. wanna hear something even better? thanks to my friend nichole and her awesome finds on her blog, i just bought this song and the rest of its album for 25 cents. 25 cents! i spend that much on a gumball at the mall. i'm in lady antebellum heaven right now.

#3 - reaching goals. remember when i said that one of mine and zachary's new year's resolutions was to run a mile for every day of the year? well, i've been failing miserably. i haven't run seven miles in a week once yet. it adds up quick, so i'm behind by like a month. that was until yesterday. i have 7.24 miles completed for this week and it's only friday! i can't tell ya how good it feels to accomplish a goal that you've set for yourself.

#4 - colored jeans. i think this is one of my favorite fashion trends as of late, especially with spring right around the corner. nothing screams happiness like bright colors to me. that's why i picked me up a pair of these last weekend:

i haven't tried them out yet, but boy am i excited to!

#5 - cruise browsing. zachary has been dying to go on a cruise since the day i met him, so we're going to make it happen this year. we originally wanted to go to europe, but that's not going to happen for a few years now i think. then we wanted to go to the caribbean in may after he graduates from training, but i don't think that's going to happen either. so now, we are looking at august/september time. my question is, for those of you that have been on a cruise, do you prefer the bahamas or the cayman islands? i haven't been able to find a cruise that does both, but i've heard great things about each of them. right now we are looking at one that would go to key west, fl, grand cayman islands, and ocho rios, jamaica or one that would go to half moon cay, the bahamas, st. thomas, usvi, san juan, puerto rico, and grand turk. thoughts, opinions, suggestions, advice?

3.06.2012

﻿if you think zachary looks the least bit upset in this picture, it's probably because he is. this was taken right after we walked all the way to disneyland, only to find out that it was closed. yes, closed. i was shocked too. apparently, there was a suspicious package found near the entrance, so they called in the police department and bomb squad and wouldn't let anyone in the park. turns out it was some college student that was geocaching and hid a streamer in a pvc pipe. what a smart kid. only after we decided to drive home and were 20 minutes away did we see on twitter that they were letting people in again. we weren't going to let a beautiful day go to waste, so we turned right around. as inconvenient as it was, the whole fiasco actually worked to our advantage. it caused a lot of people to go home, so things weren't nearly as crowded as we were expecting.

the moment we walked in to the park i felt just like a child again. all i wanted to do was skip around all day long.﻿ i won't bore you with all the little details because i'm sure the majority of you have already been to disneyland {if you haven't, you need to reconsider what you are doing with your life} and know the joy that it creates in your soul, but i will leave you with a few pictures from our magical day:

{thunder mountain railroad}

{i sure got a keeper}

{some random goat on a barrel. we thought it was funny.}

{big star wars lover right here}

{getting ready to go on the star tours ride}

{i don't think i could finish this sucker, even if i wanted to.}﻿

one of the best parts about the entire day was seeing this guy. {if nobody in this picture looks familiar to you, then you need to get with the times and start watching 'modern family'. funniest. show. ever.} we walked past him and zachary turned to me with his eyes real big and said, "that was dylan from 'modern family'!!" we then proceeded to chase him {he must have been walking really fast because we had a hard time catching up} and snapped this picture. he apologized for being in the way, but little did he know he was the reason we were taking the picture in the first place. we are kicking ourselves now for not just stopping him and getting in the picture too. it was still pretty dang sweet though.

﻿it sure was one incredible day. i'm already gearing up to go again in two weeks! can't wait.